23 Sudanese Die as Egypt Clears Migrants' Camp

CAIRO, Dec. 30 - Egyptian riot police officers rushed into a crowd of unarmed Sudanese migrants early Friday morning, killing at least 23 people, including small children, after the group refused to leave a public park it had occupied for three months hoping to press United Nations officials to relocate them.

The Sudanese -- thousands of men, women and children -- were packed into what amounted to a traffic island in an upscale neighborhood. They had fled war-torn Sudan, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo -- across the street from where they camped out -- told them that they were not eligible for refugee status or for relocation because it was safe for them to return home.

The police had tried for hours to persuade them to leave the small square, hosing them with water cannons, surrounding them with cordons of riot control officers, imploring the women and children to board buses, and repeatedly warning that they would be removed by force.

When the officers charged, women and children tried to huddle together, and to hide under blankets as some men grabbed for anything -- tree limbs, metal bars -- struggling to fight back, witnesses said. The police hesitated, then rushed in with full force, trampling people and dragging the Sudanese off to waiting buses, the witnesses said.

"They started hitting our heads with the sticks and dragging us," said Napoleon Robert Lado, a leader of the group, speaking on a cellphone from a police camp where he and others had been taken. "They dragged me when I was trying to help a woman who fainted to stand up. They dragged me, and I was stepping over the old people and women and children. I was screaming and trying to step away, but could not."

By nightfall, Muhammad Khalaf, head of the area's emergency department, said there were 23 dead, 7 of them children, 8 elderly, and 7 more women. Rights organizations said others died after being taken to police camps and being denied immediate access to health care.

For Egypt, it was another in a string of incidents that have led to widespread condemnation of the government. Last week, a court sentenced a political opposition leader, Ayman Nour, to five years of hard labor after finding him guilty of forging petitions to create his political party -- charges so widely viewed as politically motivated there was a strong rebuke from Washington and the European Union. Before that, state security forces killed more than a dozen people while trying to stop voters from casting ballots for opposition candidates during parliamentary elections.

The refugee agency stopped dealing with the Sudanese refugees after the group balked at a deal that would have had them leave the park in return for help in finding new homes in Egypt and for having all of their cases reviewed. The refugees refused. They wanted to leave Egypt, period. So the matter was turned over to Egyptian authorities, who turned it over to the security forces.

"This was an occupation we had to end," said a colonel who helped supervise the raid but asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to make any statements. "For five hours, we had been trying to negotiate with them to convince them to move to another place until the issue is solved, but they declined."

Most people involved with the crisis seemed shocked by the outcome, even Egyptian officials, who by the standards of a country that barely tolerates public dissent felt they had bent over backward to try to cajole the Sudanese into leaving.

The authorities said they were not to blame, and the refugee agency said it was not to blame either. Both blamed the Sudanese for being stubborn, a charge many of them accepted, asking who would not risk death for a chance at a better life.

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"The Egyptian authorities have been tolerating the sit-in strike for the past three months because, just like us, they wanted a peaceful solution, " said Astrid Van Genderen Stort, a spokeswoman in Cairo for the refugee agency. "But at a certain point the situation became an issue of public disorder. There were serious health threats."

The warnings began around 9 p.m., when the police surrounded the camp, hundreds, perhaps thousands, dressed in black uniforms with helmets, and plastic shields and truncheons. They shouted through bullhorns, telling the protesters to climb aboard 16 buses. The Sudanese refused, even as the police began to march in place. By 3:30 a.m., the police opened fire with water cannons, soaking the people, who huddled in the cold night between blankets and plastic tarpaulins, anything they could find. They began to pray, hold hands and scream as the officers rushed in.

"I was very scared," said Michael Edward, 32, also from a cellphone after being taken by the police. "I was screaming and looking for my wife. It is unfortunate that they attacked people and beat us brutally. What kind of crime did we commit? Who treats refugees like that?"

The showdown began in late September, when migrants, most from Sudan's south, began to show up. They kept coming, soon creating a small village, surrounded by banks, food shops and car dealerships. An estimated 3,000 people crowded into a space no larger than a basketball court. Many seemed ill, and some died in the months they were there. As the stench of human waste permeated the area, neighbors complained bitterly.

The refugee agency tried to negotiate and recently reached a deal with people identified as leaders, but the group refused to leave, because the deal did not provide for relocation.

The agency "has always appealed for peaceful means to end this situation, but we have to remember that for the past three months we have exhausted all efforts to find a peaceful solution to this problem," said Ms. Van Genderen Stort, the spokeswoman. "We met so many times with the demonstrators, we discussed their demands, we offered what we could offer, and we explained what we couldn't do. There was a lot of support from the Egyptian authorities."

Human rights groups and the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood issued statements on Friday condemning the violence and the authorities for giving up on the people in the square and sending in the police.

After being loaded onto the buses, the Sudanese were taken to three separate police camps, where their names were taken, and by late Friday some said they were being released with no possessions and nowhere to go.

The square where they had lived for three months was awash in the debris of many lives. The ground was covered with wet socks, a large plastic bag of sugar, a spoon, a shoe, a wool sweater, a striped tie, empty juice boxes, cooking margarine, a silver old pot cover, an empty baby bottle, an old Sudanese school ID with the name Tout Denek from Khartoum, family pictures of a young Sudanese girl, perhaps 5, blowing out the candles on her birthday cake. Everything was being sprayed with disinfectant by state health workers, and then loaded by sanitation workers into hauling containers.

Some neighbors were happy to see the Sudanese gone. "I swear to God you are heroes!" a woman shouted to the police as she drove by.

Abeer Allam reported from Cairo for this article, and Michael Slackman from Beirut. Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting from Cairo.